The Confusion of Laurel Graham

by Adrienne Kisner

  “Mom. Are you serious right now? If we count the guys I’ve met, you’ve brought at least five home in the past year. And those are the ones who stopped by. I know there are more who didn’t get that far. Brad is the third one in a year you’ve called ‘the real deal.’ I’m just saying that I’d rather not have random guys in the house. They weird me out.”

  I resisted the temptation to point out she’d even dated more than one Brad in six months.

  Mom sniffed. “I think you are exaggerating.”

  “Oh my god, text Gran right now. She’ll back me up. She’s met the last three…” I stopped when I realized what I said. Gran, my witness, would not be able to talk sense into Mom. Sophie knew, too, but she was at art camp and Mom wouldn’t have been pleased to learn my best friend could recount tons of embarrassing details about Mom’s love life.

  Mom and I looked at each other for an eternity of seconds.

  “Okay, well, I like to date. It relaxes me. And I know they don’t seem serious. But Brad is different, Laurel. You’ll come to see that, sweetheart. You will. He is all that is keeping me going with all that’s going on right now.”

  I frowned.

  “Well, and you, of course. But you are so busy…” Now she trailed off.

  “You know what, Mom,” I said with as much forced brightness as I could muster. “I understand. It’s fine.”

  “Honey…”

  “No. Really. I’m sure Brad is nice. But I should go. Work and stuff,” I said.

  “Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  I flashed what I hoped was my most winning smile and exited the kitchen before she could say anything else. After all, what problem did I have with Brad 2.0? Was it the beard? Was it that he took Mom’s attention? Was it that I knew he would be gone soon and I’d have had yet another brief glimpse of a father figure?

  It was probably the beard.

  Once outside, my spirits lifted. A bluebird bounced on a slender ribbon of electrical wire coiled around a splintered pole at the end of the street. He chirped to a friend in a pine not far away, who chirped back. House finches and brown-headed cowbirds pecked at crusts of bread thrown by the baker downtown. The park starlings caught wind of the buffet and tried to give chase to the other birds. As I parked my bike in the rack, all species had settled in and around one another, warily sharing. Birds weren’t so different from humans when it came to dividing resources. Both kind of sucked at it.

  Since the office didn’t open for another fifteen minutes, I walked over to the park. I sat on a bench and looked up into the trees.

  “Hey there,” said Risa, coming up beside me. “Funny meeting you here.”

  “Birding in the park?” I asked.

  “Yes. Kind of. I thought maybe … um … your bird might come back. And I could get a better look.”

  My heart grew several sizes in that moment. Risa had been a lot friendlier since we’d uncovered the Birdie Bro sabotage plot.

  “That is very kind,” I said. “I believe he had a tuft. It just doesn’t make sense. What kind of bird is he?”

  “Oh, you know what, I have news!”

  I laughed. “What? He didn’t really have a crest?”

  “Oh, no. That was for sure. No. It’s my friend. At the Science Museum? I heard back from him.”

  “Really? What did he say, then?”

  “The vocal pattern is unique. So unique, in fact, that it’s probably a mockingbird. Or a bird that is a master imitator. It’s a completely new call, not in any database. Which, unless he flew up here from the bottom of the ocean or some remote jungle, is super unlikely. So it must be an imitator bird who heard a call and changed it.”

  I thought about that. “Then why haven’t we seen it, if it’s a common bird? Or heard more of the call in general?”

  “It does seem to be spreading. Are you hearing it more often?”

  “Yeah, a little,” I said.

  “Me too. Owen and Karen hear it a lot more now, also. Louise and Richard texted me twice last week about it. Even Jerry mentioned it. I think it’s spreading. It could just be that the handful of birds who use it have been sneaky so far.”

  “Oh.” It disappointed me, a little, that it could just be an ordinary natural phenomenon. If it wasn’t special, it couldn’t be Gran.

  Risa sat down close to me. Closer than we’d ever been, in fact. She squeezed my chin between her thumb and index finger. “Cheer up, kid,” she said. “You never know. Discovering a new call is something, isn’t it? You could name it in honor of your grandmother.”

  That made me smile. “She’d like that.”

  The fact that Risa had touched me registered. This, along with the new reality that she had never been the source of my past creative failures, shifted my sense of balance. Her face hovered mere inches away from mine. What’s to say that I couldn’t just lean over and brush my lips against …

  “Hey! Heyyyyyyyy!” called a screechy little voice behind us. “I know you! You aren’t at the pond!” Karen ran up to us. “Why aren’t you at the pond?” she accused me. “And you aren’t at the pond.” She glared at Risa. “You are here instead.”

  “You are here, too,” Risa pointed out.

  Karen’s mom caught up to her. “Hi, girls.” She grinned. “We decided we’d try to do some digging into the city records ourselves.”

  “We are going to go to the city council meeting in July!” said Karen. “It’s my unproject for summer. Down with the man!” she said.

  Karen’s mother rolled her eyes. “Her other mother taught her that.”

  “Look! Richard and Louise are here!” Karen pointed to a shiny black scooter that had parked on the street. A cotton-candy pink one pulled up behind them. And another one.

  “Mr. Jerry?” Karen said. Sure enough, Jerry tugged off a helmet and attached it to the front of his scooter.

  “Did you know Jerry was in some sort of motorcycle gang with the other birders?” Risa whispered in my ear.

  “Um,” I said. I tried to come up with something witty, but I’d just noticed Risa had a tiny tattoo of a dove behind her left ear. At that moment, most of the words I knew skidded and ran into each other right there on her neck.

  “Fancy meeting you lot here,” Jerry said to Karen. “This lot convinced me to take ol’ Glinda out for a spin.”

  “Jerry has a pink scooter named Glinda,” Risa whispered again. “I could die happy knowing that.”

  I swear the dove on her neck winked at me.

  “This is good,” said Richard. “It will be harder to ignore a group of us.”

  “Though I wonder,” said Louise. “It might overwhelm the staff. You know how they are in there. Kids running the front desk. Maybe we should go in one at a time. Space it out.”

  “We checked online. We couldn’t find case numbers like Laurel said we needed. But we found references to different report names. I hope that will be enough. No one ever picks up the phone when we call. I think the admin staff are part-time in the summer,” said Karen’s mom.

  “All the tax increases, you’d think there’d be more service,” muttered Jerry. Not unlike Karen, I was a little taken aback that Jerry existed out of the context of the Nature Center. I’d never seen him in town in all the years that I’d known him. Even when I’d seen him birding with Gran, he’d always just sort of appeared in woods on the other side of town. Or the state. I always thought he was some sort of gruff wood sprite who couldn’t stray far from the trees. (Though, he had ridden in on a pink scooter named Glinda, so my theory might still hold.)

  “I want to go first,” said Karen. No one argued with her, because she had a small and powerful unschooled army a few calls away. Her mom grinned at the civil action teachable moment of it all, and followed Karen inside.

  The rest of us looked at each other.

  “Read your reports,” said Richard. “The ones you pilfered.”

  “I didn’t pilfer them,” I said. I might have. I had never heard that word before. “I
exercised my right as a person related to a taxpayer and took pictures. Nothing left that building except images.”

  Richard winked at me. “Sure. Either way, the facts add up to any Shunksville location having six or seven things going against it. And the other two options have several compelling arguments for putting the new combined schools there. Frankly, reading it all over, I don’t know that we really need a new district at all. Each town is growing, even if it’s slowly.”

  “Each town could use the economic growth, too,” said Louise. “It’s not like Richburg or Martintown are rolling in coal or steel money anymore. Surely they are fighting for the new schools.”

  The door to city hall burst open. “No, Mommy, no,” said Karen. She stopped on the top step and stomped her foot. “No fair, no fair, no fair.”

  “What happened?” asked Risa.

  “Well, we went up to the guy at the desk, who was very nice. I filled out a form for a ‘Letter of Intent to Develop Shunksville,’ a city plan we found from several months ago that includes proposals about schools. Apparently it’s checked out or in use in the building. The guy wasn’t quite sure. So we went for copies of the mayor’s remarks at the last city council meeting. My wife had gone with Karen because they were talking about all of the businesses they want to bring back to downtown with the new labs being built in Martintown. I know those should be on file because we’ve gotten them before. And then the deputy guy came out—”

  “Deputy McMean Face!” said Karen.

  “—and said that they’d instituted a new policy where you had to request any file online. No requests could be filled in less than forty-eight hours.”

  “So why do they still have someone working the desk?” said Risa.

  “And they are barely open. When can you even get the reports like that?”

  “That’s what I asked. Particularly because they don’t update the online database.”

  “Then I said I thought he was hiding the reports all for himself,” said Karen. “Because I think he is.”

  “She kind of screamed it,” said her mom apologetically. “So the deputy mayor suggested we leave.”

  “Always that guy,” I said to Risa. She nodded.

  “Well, us old-timers will try next,” said Louise. “Maybe Jerry can charm them.”

  Jerry grunted.

  “Come on.” Richard clapped him on the back. “Remember when you got the snapping turtles away from the Boy Scout troop? And those geese away from the college students studying nests? You’re good with difficult creatures.”

  Jerry grunted again, but followed Richard and Louise into city hall. Karen huffed around incensed until her mom convinced her to get a doughnut down the street. Risa and I watched them go.

  “We should get doughnuts,” I said.

  “Yes. Doughnuts after information,” she said.

  We looked at each other.

  “Ready for the bird count?” I said.

  Risa grinned. “You know it! Are you going to be there all weekend?”

  “Totally.” I couldn’t help thinking about the tiny bird behind Risa’s ear. “I like your tattoo.”

  “Oh!” Risa’s hand flew up to her neck. “You noticed that?”

  “Yeah. Did it hurt?”

  “It wasn’t too bad. Needle on bone is the worst,” she said.

  “You have more?”

  “One on my ankle. A nuthatch, since they like to climb. Or it was supposed to be a nuthatch. Not much flesh on the ol’ ankles. I cried and made them stop. It’s more of a random bird silhouette just like this one.”

  “If I find out my mystery bird, I’m going to get a tattoo of that,” I said, suddenly deciding it to be true. “For my gran.”

  Risa grinned again. “That’s a great idea! My birds are for my mom and dad. I’ll take you to my girl in the city. She’s the best. Are you eighteen soon?”

  “October. Your tattoos are for your parents? What did they think of that?”

  Risa opened her mouth like she was going to say something but then closed it. She did it a second time. “They never saw them,” she said.

  “Would you get in trouble?” I said.

  “Maybe. I mean, I live with my aunt and uncle. They would be so pissed. My parents died when I was little. Dad was a runner, so hence the ankle. And Mom used to kiss my forehead and cheeks and give me an extra behind my ears, so. Um. Yeah.”

  I had no idea Risa’s parents had died. I hadn’t really known her until high school.

  “I’m so sorry. That sucks,” I said.

  “I thought about getting ‘fuck you’ on my knuckles in honor of the aunt and uncle,” Risa said. “But they still have control of the money. And my sister.”

  “You have a sister?” I said. Good grief, did I know anything about Risa at all?

  “It’s a long story. She’s a couple years older than I am and is kind of in prison.” Risa looked out over the park for a few long moments. “Or just in prison. You can’t kind of be in there.” She shook her head. “Wow. Hey, I’m sorry I’m in a TMI mood today, I guess.”

  “No. It’s okay,” I said. “I think I started it.” I stepped closer to her. Part of me wanted to throw my arms around her. Or maybe find her mean family and throw some angry ducks on them. “You know your entry to Fauna two or three years ago? The robin’s nest?”

  Risa cocked her head. “I sat in a tree every day for two weeks to get that shot.”

  “That’s one of my favorite pictures ever. Because you got that chick pecking out. Its little beak—”

  “That was one of my best,” she said.

  “I just thought I’d tell you,” I said. My skills at comforting others needed work.

  “That means a lot coming from you. I really respect your work.” She cleared her throat. “Where’s Sophie these days?”

  “Art camp.” I sighed. “She always goes to art camp. She finds some dude or four and then forgets about me for a month. It’s part of her artistic process.” I shook my head.

  “You are really just friends?” said Risa.

  “Of course,” I laughed.

  “You are just always together at school,” she said.

  “I had a thirty-five millimeter phase in my youth. I found out her dad had a dark room in his basement. We just kind of stuck together after that.”

  “Huh,” she said.

  Silence fell again. The urge to hug her—or at least touch her—still poked at my brain. But we didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  Did we?

  Could we?

  She had just shared major life drama. She already knew most of mine. But I’d gone the change-the-subject-to-something-good route. She seemed to have liked that, at least.

  “Hey, do you…,” I said.

  “Would you think…,” she said at the same time.

  We both stopped talking.

  “What?” I said.

  “No, you can go first,” she said.

  “Oh. Okay. I was going to ask if … um. In theory … no I mean, maybe sometime we…” I had zero plan about how to do this. I’d asked people out before. On dates. But was that what I was doing? Should I go a different direction? Suggest a creative collaboration?

  I was saved from my thoughts by Louise, Richard, and Jerry emerging from city hall. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  Risa sighed, too. But it had a distinctly disappointed air to it. Or that could have been my wishful thinking.

  “What’s the word, bosses?” I asked.

  “Well, the nice boy in there seems annoyed with people telling him what to do. So I gave him three dollars and he got us one record.” Louise waved her phone. “And I got pictures, inspired by you, young lady.”

  “That took all that time?” I said. It felt like I’d been standing on the corner with Risa for years.

  “Well, then Jerry asked for the charter for the establishment of Sarig Pond and Jenkins Wood Nature Sanctuary.”

  “I’ve seen it before. I think we have a copy in the archiv
es. But it’s buried someplace since the intern from the college quit,” he said.

  (Jerry had fired the kid for throwing cigarette butts by Elder Oak, but this hardly seemed the time to remind him of that.)

  “Did you get it?” asked Risa.

  “No he did not,” said Richard. “Kid at the desk said that report was flagged and then he wandered off. Brought the mayor with him this time. We had a civil conversation, and then we left.”

  “When the mayor refused his request, Richard called him a heartless paper-pushing meat-eater,” said Louise, “so then we were told that the desk was closed.”

  “It doesn’t close until noon,” I said.

  “That’s what the sign said. I pointed that out,” said Richard.

  “And then the mayor asked us to leave.”

  “Can he do that?” asked Risa.

  “Well. He did,” said Jerry. “Something smells in there, and it’s not just those pleather chairs.”

  “Let us try,” said Risa. “It can’t hurt.”

  “Are we going to ask for the charter?” I said.

  Risa shrugged. “Do you have any other ideas?”

  “There was some decree about Pennsylvania wildlife months ago. They dedicated the pond to some statewide project. I didn’t really pay attention, because Jerry said it was mostly for a research grant or something,” I said. “But that might be on file here?”

  “We’ll go for any of it,” said Risa.

  I followed her into city hall, the weirdness of our random conversation fading as the familiar municipal office odor wafted toward me.

  “Hey, Greg,” I said.

  “Seriously, Laurel?” he said wearily.

  “What?” I said.

  “Are you with those other people?” he said. “Who were just here? From your pond?”

  “She’s only here with me,” said Risa.

  I liked the sound of that.

  “There’s a Post-it here about you,” he said to me. “You are blacklisted from city hall.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I’m supposed to go get the deputy or the mayor or Vern the security guy if you come in. Apparently you create a disturbance.”